Monday, April 12, 2004

All who have watched any of the proceedings of the 9/11 Commission or followed the media reports needs to read for themselves the president's daily briefing (PDB) from August 6, 2001 .

The so-called "smoking gun" was A). delivered to the president when he requested information on Bin Laden's activities, and B). is almost entirely composed of information gathered in 1997 and 1998, while the Clinton Administration still had at least two more years in office.

Let me repeat the latter point again for you, because you certainly won't hear it emphasized in the mainstream media. Read the memo yourself. Every point in the memo details information gathered during the Clinton Administration. The PDB was declassified only Saturday, but if I had been the administration, I would have declassified it long ago. All it really shows is the monumental laxity of Bill Clinton's dealings with terrorism.

As you read the memo, ask yourself what you would have done, based on this information, to deter 9/11. Write each point of action down on a piece of paper. Then, read each point back to yourself, imagining the liberal response to it. For example, "Step One: arrest all suspected Bin Laden associates in America and search their possessions and computer records, whether they've broken any laws or not, and then implement stricter airport security measures, particularly on those who are connected in any way to Saudi Arabia...."

Right. The same ones now whinnying for political hay are the ones who would've thwarted any efforts at preemption, and we all know it. And imagine the apoplectic howls from the antiwar left and right if Bush had launched a preemptive attack before 9/11.